Andijviestamppot (Endive Mash)
Andijviestamppot
Cooked curly endive wilted into buttery mashed potato — a soft, faintly bitter green stamppot finished with crisp bacon and a knob of melting butter.
IIStamppot & the Mash- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Serves
- 4
- Level
- Beginner
Andijviestamppot is the gentlest of the green stamppotten. Where boerenkool bruises the potato dark and zuurkool turns it sharp, curly endive lends only a whisper of bitterness and a scatter of soft green flecks — a mash for people who find kale too assertive and plain potato too dull. It became a fixture of the plain nineteenth-century Dutch kitchen precisely because it was cheap, quick, and needed no long simmer.
Raw into hot
The defining move here is that the endive goes in uncooked. This is the recipe's whole cleverness: shredded fine and folded into potato hot from the masher, the leaves wilt just enough to soften without ever touching boiling water. Boil them first and you get the grey, sulphurous droop that gives cooked greens a bad name; fold them raw and you keep colour, lift, and a clean vegetal edge. It is a lesson the household manuals of the 1800s taught explicitly, and it still holds.
A mash built on butter
Because the greens add no starch and no fat, andijviestamppot leans hard on the potato underneath. Cook the potatoes fully, dry them, and be generous with warm milk and cold butter so the base is soft enough to carry the raw leaf. A grating of nutmeg — the VOC spice that never left the Dutch cupboard — rounds the whole thing.
The heat of the potato is the only pot the endive needs; fold, wilt, and serve.
Crown it with bacon fried to a crackle and its rendered fat poured over, a fried egg if the day was long, and a knob of butter melting in a well pressed into the top.
“Fold the endive in raw and let the mash's heat wilt it — boiling the leaves first drowns their gentle bitterness and turns them a tired grey-green.”
Ingredients
Serves 4
The mash
- 1 kgfloury potatoes — peeled, cut in chunks
- 1 headcurly endive — andijvie, about 400 g
- 150 mlwarm milk
- 50 gbutter — cold, cubed
- 1 pinchgrated nutmeg
To finish
- 150 gsmoked bacon — spekjes, diced
- to tastesalt and pepper
- 1 knobbutter — for the well
Method
- 1
Boil the potatoes
Cover the potato chunks with salted water and boil until fully soft, about 20 minutes. They need to be properly done, since the raw endive folded in later contributes no starch and cannot mask an undercooked potato.
- 2
Shred the endive
While they cook, wash the curly endive well — grit hides in the frilled leaves — and shred it finely. Cutting it small is what lets the hot mash wilt it evenly instead of leaving raw ribbons.
- 3
Render the bacon
Fry the diced bacon slowly until crisp and the fat has rendered. Set the bacon aside on the crisp side and keep the warm fat; it goes into the mash as seasoning and carries the smoke through.
- 4
Mash hot
Drain and briefly dry the potatoes, then mash with the warm milk, cold butter and nutmeg until smooth but not gluey. Work quickly so the mash stays hot enough to cook the greens in the next step.
- 5
Fold the endive through
Tip the shredded endive into the hot mash and fold vigorously. The heat collapses the leaves to a soft, dark-green fleck in a minute or two. Season, fold in most of the bacon, and finish with a butter well on top.
In the kitchen
The tools that make this recipe easier.
- EssentialPotato ricer ↗
The route to lump-free stamppot and mash.
Crowning the mash
Stamppot is a canvas: a well of gravy and something smoked or pickled.
- Rookworst — smoked sausage, sliced into the well
- Jus — a pool of dark gravy in the centre
- Piccalilli or zuur — sharp pickles to cut the richness
- Speklapjes — crisped pork belly for kale stamppot
Questions from the kitchen
Should I cook the endive first?+
No need. Shredded finely, curly endive wilts perfectly in the heat of the just-mashed potato and keeps its colour and mild bite. Only very coarse leaves benefit from a brief blanch.
Curly endive or escarole?+
The Dutch andijvie is curly endive, mildly bitter. Broad-leaf escarole works but is milder still; either wants to be shredded small before it meets the mash.
What goes on top?+
Crisp bacon and its fat are traditional, sometimes with a fried egg or meatballs and gravy. A ring of rookworst is never wrong.
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